Ordinary Citizens Do Not Have Power?

Saturday's Chicago Sun Times carries an op-ed piece written by Mike Gecan of the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF):

http://www.suntimes.com/news/otherviews/114577,CST-EDT-REF28b.article

Mike Gecan of the IAF implies that ordinary citizens do not have political power. He credits the coalition building team United Power for (Action) & Justice as the key to that. Read Mike's op-ed piece.

Read also IAF Mission Statement:

"The IAF is non-ideological and strictly non-partisan, but proudly, publicly, and persistently political. The IAF builds a political base within society's rich and complex third sector - the sector of voluntary institutions that includes religious congregations, labor locals, homeowner groups, recovery groups, parents associations, settlement houses, immigrant societies, schools, seminaries, orders of men and women religious, and others. And then the leaders use that base to compete at times, to confront at times, and to cooperate at times with leaders in the public and private sectors

The IAF develops organizations that use power - organized people and organized money - in effective ways. The secret to the IAF's success lies in its commitment to identify, recruit, train, and develop leaders in every corner of every community where IAF works. The IAF is indeed a radical organization in this specific sense: it has a radical belief in the potential of the vast majority of people to grow and develop as leaders, to be full members of the body politic, to speak and act with others on their own behalf. And IAF does indeed use a radical tactic: the face-to-face, one-to-one individual meeting whose purpose is to initiate a public relationship and to re-knit the frayed social fabric.

The living reality of the IAF is overwhelmingly present in the 57 IAF affiliates functioning in 21 states, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Germany

Regional gatherings of those local groups - IAF East in the northeast corridor and Southwest IAF in the American southwest - also meet, plan, and take action "

Now, the alphabet soup gets more heady. United Power for (Action) & Justice has its website down and under construction but there was a link to the event here in Illinois -

http://www.lakeviewaction.org/united_power_for_action_and_just.htm

The Lakeview Action Coalition - We have the IAF, UPAJ, and LAC - all using the very same goals and objectives as this link :

http://www.leninism.org/stream/2001/mwg-faq-716.htm The goals and objectives are identical are identical to MWG

Last night, I was with about 2,000 people, all ordinary people, except for a few extrardinarily good looking women ( Hey I'm a widower - Iain't dead.), participating in the political process by raising money for a Democratic candidate. Those People are empowered with the right to vote and to exercise their God given and Constitutionally protected Right to give voice to their political opinions. Most of them seemed pretty smart and talented - it was a real coalition of workers: lawyers, teachers, tradesmen, artists ( BS and otherwise), journalists, academics, reformers, and old-timey cigar chompers. They put together a powerful statement of faith in the American political process. There are many 'coalition building fronts ' with Peoples and Workers and Mobilized and Cadres in their names. God love 'em. Ain't it great that our system of government -with its crooks and phonies and dummies popping up like whack-a-moles - makes room and even sets up microphones for alphabet soup politicos?

I do not know if telling people that they are 'powerless ordinary' folks is the way to get them to mobilize, as Mike Gecan of IAF and all the other acronyms he's fronting, but a local Democratic candidate for office sure had the folks mobilized. Tom Dart told them that they were powerful and they responded.